United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday called on China, whose rapid industrial growth has turned it into one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, to do more to tackle climate change.
”China is one of the biggest emitters and should take part … in the international community’s common efforts to address these climate-change issues,” Ban told journalists.
A Dutch government research body last month said China’s emission levels of carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming — surpassed those of the United States by 8% in 2006.
Industrial countries in the West have hitherto been blamed for most emissions, but the UN chief said emerging economies in Asia and elsewhere now had to face up to their own responsibilities.
”The major emitting countries like China, Brazil and India … will take their own efforts to participate actively” in the international community’s efforts to reduce emissions, he said.
”Time is of [the] essence to galvanise political will and coordinate concrete action,” he urged.
”Both developing countries and developed countries have common responsibilities.”
China reacted angrily to the Dutch report, accusing the West of hypocrisy given its continued consumer demand for Chinese-made products, often in factories owned by Western corporations taking advantage of cheap labour costs.
”China is now a world factory. The developed countries moved a lot of manufacturing industries to China,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Qin Gang said last month.
”A lot of things you wear and you eat are produced in China. On the one hand you increase the production in China, and on the other hand you criticise China on the emission reduction issue, so it is unfair,” he said.
UN negotiations are trying to tie in developing nations such as China, as well as the US, into a new accord on greenhouse gas emission targets to cover the period after 2012. — Sapa-AFP